Big Numbers

I spent a 12-hour train ride through all the twilight mountains of upstate New York, reading William Vollmann’s wonderful book about riding freight trains. It is now time for me to read all his books — I believe the man is a kindred spirit.

Every time I surrender, even necessarily, to authority which disregardingly or contemptuously violates me, so I violate myself. Every time I break an unnecessary law, doing so for my own joy and to the detriment of no other human being, so I regain myself, and become strong in the parts of me that the security man can never see.

Even better — it seems Will Wilkinson agrees. And pretty much any friend of Will Wilkinson is a friend of mine.

(N.B. I am fighting a long-standing bad habit here — it is my aim not to mention politics even in the off-topic posts on this blog. Talking politics for me is the way tequila is for other people: it always seems like a good idea at the time and a bad idea in the morning. But this is literature, not politics, and therefore kosher — or so I tell myself.)